Hire for person fit, not only skills fit

Is hiring for skills the best option when looking to fill a role? Read on for one take on the topic.

How hiring often works:

During the recruitment and selection process, there is a strong focus on ensuring shortlisted candidates, and the eventually successful candidate, are the perfect skills fit for the role being advertised.

While this has obvious benefits, providing hiring mangers and their recruitment teams assurance the individuals possesses the necessary capabilities and technical skill set needed to perform in the role, there is a school of thought that employers solely examining skills are missing out when undertaking recruitment in this way.

Because of this…

An increasing number of hiring managers and recruiters are now looking for fit in terms of personality rather than purely technical skills. Personality fit refers to the soft skills a new hire needs to have, and how they will complement the existing team they will be joining.

For example, hiring a highly skilled and technically brilliant new employee might sound like a dream come true. And it is, until the new hire begins questioning every action and interaction their colleagues make, acting with unprecedented autonomy and putting all of their colleagues offside.

What happens next?

If such interactions become commonplace, they can quickly drag team morale down and reduce productivity. Obviously, neither of these are desirable, and may be a higher price to pay for a seemingly stellar candidate.

It’s worth noting, while some questioning of existing practice is good and can often result in necessary changes taking place, there are ways and means of achieving change that do not reduce team coherence.

All in all, it is often worthwhile to invest in a person who is a personality fit as well as a skills fit when looking to fill your next vacancy.